"Never mind the fact that the iPod turned the entire music industry on its head. Never mind the fact that most successful notebooks today resemble designs first popularized by Apple. Never mind the fact that the blueprint of the modern day smartphone remains the original iPhone. Never mind the fact that competitors are scrambling wildly to copy the success and design of the iPad. Forget all of these things, because when it comes to Apple, the 'what have you done for me lately?' mentality reigns supreme."

Apple does get an extraordinary amount of hate, and I find it baffling. I've been an Apple user since the early 80s. I was seven at the time. I've seen the company go from being a world leader to a marginal player on the brink of destruction, back to being a world leader - indeed, to the world's most valuable company (though why a phone and computer company should be that also baffles me.)

I was ridiculed for using Apple for pretty much the entire 90s. Then something changed, it wasn't the iMac or iPod. It was OS X. Apple went form a company with a stale OS to a posix compliant platform with a great (subjective as it is) UI. Everyone loved it. Why? because Apple was the underdog. Apple's perhaps most underrated move was switching to Intel. It removed all barriers to adoption from the Windows world. You could buy an Apple but if you didn't like it, You could still run windows. At native speed no less. While iPod was fast becoming the must-have consumer item, it was the change to Intel and the lightning fast adoption of OS X by the developer community that was backbone behind Apple's growth.

Many people who talk about Apple's walled garden and control freakery ignore the fact that a massive proportion of developers switched to OSX in the early naughties because it fulfilled a certain promise that was made by Linux and never quite delivered. A great OS, that's *easy* to use. Idiots and seasoned hackers alike were at home with OS X.

Fast forward to the iPhone, A phone both lauded for it's revolutionary design (in every sense) and ridiculed for basic flaws. More so in Europe where phones and phone usage behaviour were far more developed that in the US. Apple redefined an entire industry. As they had done with computers.

Sure, Apple isn't as "inventive"as they were in the early 80s. But I truly believe anyone who thinks Android would in any way shape or form exist in the mature feature-rich state it is today without the iPhone is delusional. And no, pointing to obscure projects here and there that also used similar technologies isn't good enough.

Apple isn't hated now because of it's walled garden. Almost every_single_osNews reader can bypass Apple's garden if they want. It's not hard. It's hated because of it's success. People who make comparison's with MS back in the day are way off the mark. No one, and I mean *no* one is forcing you to use an Apple. Or to develop for it. The market made that decision. And the market will royally screw Apple when it get's it wrong (unlike MS back in the day).

Your Samsung is in no small part awesome because of Apple. Windows no longer sucks because OS X (and Linux) beat the living crap out of it. And here's the good news, once Apple make's crap products (as decide by the market, not you, fellow OSNews Geek), it will fail.

Apple is not the be all and end all of tech companies. And to be sure, some of their policies and indeed products suck sometimes. People talk about the *harm* Apple is doing to the industry. I can't help but think, "Are you new to the internet, or just technology?".

To be sure, I'm perfectly aware by expressing any remotely pro-Apple opinion on this website means I will be rated down to Dante's lowest circle of hell. *snorts dried Apple Cool-Aid*